Danger: America Is Losing Its Edge In Innovation

I’ve visited more than 100 countries in the past several years, meeting people from all walks of life, from impoverished children in India to heads of state. Almost every adult I’ve talked with in these countries shares a belief that the path to success is paved with science and engineering.

In fact, scientists and engineers are celebrities in most countries. They’re not seen as geeks or misfits, as they too often are in the U.S., but rather as society’s leaders and innovators. In China, eight of the top nine political posts are held by engineers. In the U.S., almost no engineers or scientists are engaged in high-level politics, and there is a virtual absence of engineers in our public policy debates.

Why does this matter? Because if American students have a negative impression – or no impression at all – of science and engineering, then they’re hardly likely to choose them as professions. Already, 70% of engineers with PhD’s who graduate from U.S. universities are foreign-born. Increasingly, these talented individuals are not staying in the U.S – instead, they’re returning home, where they find greater opportunities.

Part of the problem is the lack of priority U.S. parents place on core education. But there are also problems inherent in our public education system. We simply don’t have enough qualified math and science teachers. Many of those teaching math and science have never taken a university-level course in those subjects.

I’ve always wanted to be a teacher; in fact, I took early retirement from my job in the aerospace industry to pursue a career in education. But I was deemed unqualified to teach 8th-grade math in any school in my state. Ironically, I was welcomed to the faculty at Princeton University, where the student newspaper ranked my course as one of 10 that every undergraduate should take.

In a global, knowledge-driven economy there is a direct correlation between engineering education and innovation. Our success or failure as a nation will be measured by how well we do with the innovation agenda, and by how well we can advance medical research, create game-changing devices and improve the world.

I continue to be active in organizations like the IEEE to help raise the profile of the engineering community and ensure that our voice is heard in key public policy decisions. That’s also why I am passionate about the way engineering should be taught as a profession – not as a collection of technical knowledge, but as a diverse educational experience that produces broad thinkers who appreciate the critical links between technology and society.

Here we are in a flattening world, where innovation is the key to success, and we are failing to give our young people the tools they need to compete. Many countries are doing a much better job. Ireland, despite a devastated economy, just announced it will increase spending on basic research. Russia is building an “innovation city” outside of Moscow. Saudi Arabia has a new university for science and engineering with a staggering $10 billion endowment. (It took MIT 142 years to reach that level.) China is creating new technology universities literally by the dozens.

These nations and many others have rightly concluded that the way to win in the world economy is by doing a better job of educating and innovating. And America? We’re losing our edge. Innovation is something we’ve always been good at. Until now, we’ve been the undisputed leaders when it comes to finding new ideas through basic research, translating those ideas into products through world-class engineering, and getting to market first through aggressive entrepreneurship.

That’s how we rose to prominence. And that’s where we’re falling behind now. The statistics tell the story.

U.S. consumers spend significantly more on potato chips than the U.S. government devotes to energy R&D.

In 2009, for the first time, over half of U.S. patents were awarded to non-U.S. companies.

China has replaced the U.S. as the world’s number one high-technology exporter.

Between 1996 and 1999, 157 new drugs were approved in the U.S. Ten years later, that number had dropped to 74.

The World Economic Forum ranks the U.S. #48 in quality of math and science education.

Innovation is the key to survival in an increasingly global economy. Today we’re living off the investments we made over the past 25 years. We’ve been eating our seed corn. And we’re seeing an accelerating erosion of our ability to compete. Charles Darwin observed that it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change.

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[...] aircraft America Losing its Edge in Innovation Forbes has an interesting article about America losing its edge in innovation because engineers and scientists in the US are not as respected as they are in other countries, and [...]

As a British inventor that the record will show worked tirelessly to attempt to introduce a Video-911 system, (over which I still retain full IP control), as an upgrade to the existing E911 system, I can tell you from direct experience that, at the highest levels in the United States, both at government level as well as venture capital; there is no desire to permit a fully competitive industrial society to take root. I will not blather on here; instead, read The Road Ahead from a Grass Roots Perspective, particularly chapter 12. www.chriscoles.com/page3.html

I am a licensed engineer in 7 states. I did not attend graduate school for a simple reason – I could make 5 times the salary of a grad student stipend. That type of money is hard to make up for over the course of a career. And once registered as a professional engineer, it made little difference anyway. Salaries in my field are drug down by government and industry exemptions for “engineers”. Governments allow non-professionals to use the title and pay them less. My work is more often than not reviewed by a regulator who may not even have a 4-year ABET accredited degree and certainly is not a licensed engineer. If it is important for me to have a degree from an ABET accredited college, practice as an intern under a licensed engineer for 4 years, pass two 8-hour exams (that ultimately only 50% of said graduates pass), and take part in continuing education every year so I can legally design things, why is it not important for government and industry-exempt “engineers” to do the same?

Now, a 2011 graduate with an engineering degree is required to go to grad school or have “30+” additional hours before he can get licensed. This policy coupled with lack of enforcement and the previously mentioned exemptions will result in even fewer engineers. Many high school seniors who may have been interested in a career in engineering will certainly chose other careers with similar educational, licensing, and training requirements with much higher salaries.

Yes, scientists and engineers should be respected, instead of having their careers undermined, just as residents and citizens should have their privacy respected (and those evil Lockheed Martin surveillance cameras ripped down and/or destroyed). Job ads should include e-mail addresses and voice telephone numbers of actual hiring managers instead of resumes being mangled and consigned to some black-hole data-base.

“Nerds” used to be proud of the label and their “Real Genius”, used to take joy in being renaissance men and women, just as Americans took the attempted British slur of the American Revolution era and proudly proclaimed themselves “Yankees” and later “Yanks”.

When students see their scientist and engineer relatives and acquaintances fully employed, they will see these fields as viable options. As long as they see millions of STEM workers unemployed and under-employed (selling blue jeans, raking leaves, pet-sitting) and homeless, they won’t be very interested in expending extra effort to become impoverished, themselves.

In light of several decades of hideously excessive non-immigrant visa abuse and vastly excessive immigration, E-3, F, H, J, L, and EB-1 through EB-3 visas should be cut by at least 95%, held there for at least 15 years, and every visa applicant should have to pass a proper background investigation.

I volunteer as a “mentor” in the engineering department at a university that is considered one of the top 2 or 3 engineering colleges in the U.S. I should point out that I have no college degree, however I have been self-employed as a machinist (and designer, and arguably: an engineer) for 35+ years. I have made parts that have gone into space, and parts to fix my washing machine, and everything in between.

My observations after a couple of years of interaction with students and professors? The vast majority of students have no practical knowledge at all. The vast majority of professors are lazy, and have no practical knowledge at all. A very large portion of the professors I have met (tenured PhDs) simply treat their job as a government job — maximum pay and benefits with minimum work.

On the subject of students — how can an engineering education amount to anything (even assuming it was a GOOD engineering education) if they have no fundamental understanding of the basics. I have had the privilege of working with a few brilliant students. Guess what? — they were brilliant before they ever went to college! They could do the jobs they are doing after college without ever having gone to school! What do these [few] students have in common? Simple — they spent their childhood and formative years “out in the garage with their Dad or their friends…. making stuff”. Years and years of smacking their fingers with a hammer, bending metal, learning how to weld, fixing their bicycles, motorcycles and cars, etc..

These are not unique instances — the good ones (students, and professors as well) that amount to anything (IMO) all have a very extensive background in “making and doing stuff”…. before they ever set foot in a college.

I submit that we have an even larger problem than this article says: as a society… even a “mentality”, we have sunk to the level where the only issue anyone cares about any more is making…. money (by whatever method — lying, cheating, stealing, embezzling, government job doing nothing, etc….. the easier the scam, the better).